It goes without saying that the original version of this game, Serious
Sam, seriously (no pun intended) shocked many critics and gamers alike
when it first came out last year. Up until that time, nobody had
thought a value title could be a fun game, much less a good one. By
now, I think most people who read this review will probably know who Sam
Stone is and how he is out to battle aliens, save planets like ours and
generally wreck havoc. In this sense, many people have pointed out,
this is not unlike a tongue-in-cheek reference to our bygone hero, Duke
Nukem.

Certainly, the second edition of Serious Sam has no pretense in becoming
anything greater. It takes the elements of the first title and expands
it so the end result is similar to what we saw in Doom II from Doom.
That's not to say this is a glorified mission pack. Fans need not be
lachrymose that their favorite franchise has diluted itself. Indeed,
the truth is far from it. The premise remains relatively the same
albeit this time, Sam Stone battles his archrival Mental across three
distinct pieces of terrain over some extremely massive real estate. His
modus operandi continues to be the same; shoot first and ask questions
later, much later. If you thought some of the battlegrounds in the
desert were large, you haven't seen anything yet.

In general, the new real estate is still designed around the concept of
the simplistic no frills FPS title. Your character still carries an extraordinary amount of firepower, reloads and switches weapons on a dime, and takes incredible amounts of damage. Serious Sam makes the FPS game
as close to a sport as it can possibly get. Certain monsters are
vulnerable to certain weapons. Moreover, with the addition of important
weapons like the sniper rifle, you'll be switching through weapons and
nailing monsters with them literally like clockwork. As with the
original title, you'll face horde after horde of enemies. And managing
the situation along while making precise shots is part of the 'sport'
element and it really makes Serious Sam a spokesperson for all the
cyber-athletic leagues.

Level design is even more clever this time around. Some of Serious Sam's
magic lies not in just swarming you with different types of enemy but
also in what enemies you're forced to deal with and in what order.
Pacing and timing are also key elements that made the original Serious
Sam fun. This second encounter is no different. There are periods of
near silence that serve to drum up anticipation. One particular level
had a row of lights shutting off and as the darkness encroached upon
you, you could hear the chainsaws of your nemeses approaching closer and
closer; drama at its best. Instead of playing with numbers, some of the
traps are now environmental based, with floors that flip up and down or
rooms that exude a sense of vertigo. There are also crushing ceilings
and wind tunnels amongst spike-laden walls. There's also one portion
where you move along a torus-shaped piece of terrain; wholly impossible
in real life physics but certainly possible in the fiction of Serious
Sam. The effect is absolutely sublime. Like a good Shakespearean
tragedy, the developers painstakingly use a series of these contraptions
to prepare you for the inevitable boss showdowns.

Also like a Shakespearean tragedy, there's comedy after the main action.
Ample humor is injected into the title. I already mentioned before that
tongue-in-cheek reference to that other blonde-haired gun-toting PC
icon. Sam Stone continues to espouse his witty one-liners, although I
still thought there weren't enough in quantity. His lines are funny, if
not funnier than Duke because there are times the hero knows he is
trapped in a game. For example, after you defeat the first chainsaw
wielding Jack-O-Latern monster (known as Cucurbito the Pumpkin), it
breaks down a wall in dramatic fashion and appears again shortly
thereafter. Irony is created when Sam notices this and promptly asks
whether he hadn't killed this guy already.

This is not to say the second outing of Serious Sam is flawless. There
is room for complaint. In the beginning, there is a great emphasis on
jumping puzzles, perhaps to make up for the fact that you don't exactly
field too many weapons early on in the game. The jumping puzzles
involve things like jumping on elevating pads to cross a certain chasm;
things that appear much more at home in Tomb Raider than Serious Sam.
The action picks up shortly afterwards and the puzzles seem to stop once
your arsenal is big enough to handle more combat. For those who were
disgusted by the simplicity of Serious Sam, you won't like this version,
as it attempts nothing to improve its anemic puzzles. Some of the
'puzzles' still involve hitting switches. To work it into the fiction,
you're told to retrieve some idols or icons and place them at certain
places to open doors. And invariably, all the levels will degenerate
into some boss encounter with a Herculian monster many times the size of
the hero. Thus, the premise of the title hasn't changed.

Often value developers write to tell me about how lucky Croteam has been
in receiving such a prolonged period of funding just to craft their 3D
engine. The visuals, by the way, still remain top notch; able to handle
the long draw distances and environmental effects. However, its little
things like providing tools for mod development out of the box and an
incredibly flexible multiplayer feature that illustrate why, as far as value
titles go, Serious Sam never gives you the feeling this is anything
economical or value-based. You get everything including the kitchen
sink in this game. Multiplayer options persist to be numerous including
the unique split-screen mode where you can pair up to eight people using
only two PCs. Why no other developers have adopted these as standards
is beyond me. You can also save during network play, something I
haven't seen since the very early days of Doom. Respawn doesn't place
you at the beginning of the level, but near enough to the action so
traveling is minimized. Unlike the first edition, you can set up
dedicated servers out of the box. Previously, patches were required to
automate the whole process. By far, the most entertaining mode has to
be the co-operative play. Nothing beats holding off the monstrous
hordes than with a few compatriots. Its execution is a tribute to why
this persists to be one of the most entertaining multiplayer
experiences, par excellence, you'll be seeing this year.

To alleviate previous criticisms about Serious Sam being too sandy, the
artists have constructed three different motifs. None of this is
brought out more vividly than the first level where you wade through a
jungle to reach a temple on the horizon. The enemies charging by you
are augmented with impressive EAX effects and the experience is not
unlike that found in the final part of the popcorn movie, The Mummy
Returns. The effects themselves are decent but not a leap over the
original title. The soundtracks are still mostly chains of percussion,
unable to create any effect of synaesthesia to complement the colorful
visuals. They get progressively better as you move through the story.
If you look closely, however, the visuals are actually quite similar in
fundamentals. Most continue to revolve around mythological designs and
the monsters still plunder from the same mix of horror movies and
ancient mythology.

Sequels often get a bad reputation as titles that wash out or dilute the
original. Publishers have the propensity to artificially create
franchises from successful inaugural titles. The sequel to Serious Sam,
however, debunks that misconception and though the achievement is not
entirely revolutionary, it continues to be an impressive title in its
own right like the symbiotic relationship between The Godfather and its
second part. The developers continue to show that they know what FPS
games are all about and the action you find in this title is as close to
the true 'craft' of the FPS as you will ever find on the market today.
Whether this will continue in the easily predicted third Serious Sam
title is uncertain, but hopefully Croteam won't take as long as id
software in producing a trilogy out of this much vaunted franchise.